Can biological complexity be reverse engineered?

Abstract

Concerns with the use of engineering approaches in biology have recently been raised. I examine tworelated challenges to biological research that I call the synchronic and diachronic underdeterminationproblem. The former refers to challenges associated with the inference of design principles underlyingsystem capacities when the synchronic relations between lower-level processes and higher-level systemscapacities are degenerate (many-to-many). The diachronic underdetermination problem regards theproblem of reverse engineering a system where the non-linear relations between system capacities andlower-level mechanisms are changing over time. Braun and Marom argue that recent insights to biologicalcomplexity leave the aim of reverse engineering hopeless - in principle as well as in practice.While I support their call for systemic approaches to capture the dynamic nature of living systems, I takeissue with the conflation of reverse engineering with naïve reductionism. I clarify how the notion ofdesign principles can be more broadly conceived and argue that reverse engineering is compatible with adynamic view of organisms. It may even help to facilitate an integrated account that bridges the gapbetween mechanistic and systems approaches.